The human brain is powerful and highly receptive to stimuli. Pornography corrupts and shapes your mind to believe things about sexuality that are untrue. It communicates that sex is something to be consumed and people are a means to an end. How these negative effects of watching porn come into play in a person’s life vary, but pornography harms your relationships and negatively impacts your mental health.
Is Watching Porn Harmful?
Pornography is sexually explicit material intended to arouse. Viewing this material can harm you in various ways — both upon viewing and in your future.
Matt Wenger, Clinical Director at Begin Again Institute, said habitual pornography use rewires the brain, resulting in people viewing intimacy as purely sexual behavior.
“We lose the ability to be truly intimate. We lose connection with ourselves and others. We lose connection with God as his image bearers. We are thrown into shame cycles and toxic performative religiosity,” he said.
“Using porn also tricks our brain into thinking that what we want out of porn is purely sexual. When in reality, we are now going to porn for a form of (false) intimacy and hoping to get the fruits of it in fullness — peace, comfort, safety, worth, validation, affirmation, etc. But neither porn nor sex can provide these things. They are only found in truly authentic, vulnerable, and emotional relationships with God and others.”
T.C. Ryan, author of Ashamed No More: A Pastor’s Journey Through Sex Addiction and Pastoral Consultant at Begin Again Institute, wrote, “Pornography is a tool for facilitating lust.”
“Pornography takes something very real, very human — something everyone can relate to — and distorts it,” he wrote. “Our sexuality is meant to be lived and expressed in the context of a healthy, integrative life, and pornography is never an expression of good health or integrative living. Pornography is disintegrating.”
The Negative Effects of Watching Porn
Many people believe that watching pornography is harmless, but it can have serious consequences. Most people are unaware of how watching porn can negatively impact their lives.
Porn use is associated with lower life satisfaction, less relationship intimacy, and negative mental health outcomes like depression and anxiety. It also affects how men view women, making them more likely to objectify women as sexual objects rather than human beings.
Matt said people should avoid ever viewing pornography.
“Studies have shown time and time again that porn is not safe for empathic and frontal lobe development, regardless of one’s moral view,” he said.
The adverse effects of watching porn are:
- Spiritual. Watching porn can become addictive because it creates an artificial pleasure that leaves people empty when they stop watching it. This emptiness is often filled with guilt or shame because viewing pornography goes against religious beliefs or moral values.
- Psychological. Effects may include increased levels of stress, depression, and anxiety because of feelings of guilt, shame, or self-loathing. It can also lead to increased risk for mental health conditions.
- Physical. Pornography makes people more likely to develop certain sexual dysfunctions, including erectile dysfunction, delayed ejaculation, and decreased libido.
- Behavioral. Watching pornography may lead to behavior changes in some people. If someone watches pornography regularly, they may begin to compromise their values in other areas and engage in other behaviors that they would never have considered before, such as lying or stealing to cover it up.
“Whatever the initial effect of watching porn, it will only get worse,” T.C. said. “Pornography has a progressive effect. We start in one place, or with one passing notion, and find ourselves moving into areas where we never dreamed we’d find ourselves.”
The Negative Effects of Porn on Relationships
Pornography can negatively affect your marriage and other important relationships. It can break down trust within a relationship and lead to lying, infidelity, and risky sexual behaviors.
Intimacy and relationships with others rely on truth, but people addicted to pornography hide the truth and often lie, Matt said.
“Truth is the foundation of intimacy,” he said. “This means, among other things, that one party in the relationship does not get to decide what the truth is. One party doesn’t get to decide what is the truth about their relationship and who gets to know the truth.”
Pornography use also makes a person emotionally unavailable to their partner, Matt said.
“They’re sexually disconnected and cause deep emotional and psychological damage through the repeated betrayals of discovering the use of porn, not to mention lying and gaslighting to cover it up,” he said.
The Negative Effects of Porn on Society
Pornography doesn’t just harm an individual and their lives. It has a wider negative effect on society too.
“Pornography distorts people’s humanity, even if no one wants to admit it,” T.C. wrote.
Pornography is a huge industry and an increasingly acceptable part of the culture. Although it is often considered harmless entertainment, some serious consequences come from consuming it.
Matt said that pornography dehumanizes people.
“It dehumanizes those depicted in it and makes it much more likely that its users will dehumanize people in their daily lives through objectification,” he said.
Pornography use is not a victimless crime, Matt said.
“Using pornography perpetuates a worldwide culture of human sexualization, in which it is acceptable to view humans as mere objects of sexual desire and not people,” he said.
Men who consume large amounts of pornography tend to view women negatively because they view them as objects instead of human beings with feelings and emotions, T.C. said
“Porn magnifies human sexuality, distorts it, makes it larger than reality, and isolates it for trade,” he said. “At the same time, it makes the magnificence of being a creature made in the image of God something as insignificant as ink of paper or pixels on a screen. It’s a most malicious smearing of the divine images of all of us. Simply put, porn is uncompromising, progressive, destructive evil.”
Are You Experiencing the Negative Effects of Watching Porn?
If you’re watching porn, it’s hurting your life.
Many people who watch pornography regularly report feeling tired and unmotivated, arguing with their partners, or having trouble concentrating at work and school. If you’re experiencing any of these negative effects, it might be time to assess porn’s impact on your life.
Pornography can be incredibly addictive. Admitting your problem and becoming accountable for your behaviors are key to recovering from pornography addiction. You’ll also likely need professional help to uncover the root cause of your porn use and help you heal from it.
Getting Help at Boulder Recovery
If you need sex addiction treatment, pornography addiction treatment, or treatment for another intimacy disorder, Begin Again Institute is here to help. We have a variety of programs to meet your needs, including our 14-Day Men’s Intensive and our 14-Day Christian Men’s Intensive to help launch your recovery and renew your faith. Contact us to learn more about our program.
For more than 20 years, Doug Harsch worked as both a pastor and lay counselor in the city of Chicago. Feeling called in a new direction, he completed his Masters in Mental Health Counseling from Trinity International University.
